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Like Belladonna’s bridegroom (aka Macbeth), I have, in the recent weeks of May and June, been ‘lapped in proof’(s) - that is, not clad in armour, but definitely under bombardment, as two sets of book proofs arrived simultaneously on my laptop.

​In the end, all you can do is dig in and get on with it. But proofreading makes almost every word seem like a concealed booby trap: thus, should that ‘proofreading’ really be ‘proof reading’, or ‘proof-reading’?

​And how long does it take to get a definitive answer to a question like that? Well, it all depends on where you are when the matter arises. If you are working at home, the book you reach out to for the answer is probably in the corresponding position in your office, so it could take the whole day.

All the same, no aspect of writing is quite as enjoyable as spotting a tiny error at proof-stage: and by ‘tiny’ I mean tiny. One of my comments on the terrific index compiled by my co-editor of one of these books reads: ‘In the entry on “eco-semiotics”, close up one space before “177”’.​

​In the other book, I was puzzled by my comment on a rival author and ‘his latest 600K’, as if his inflated royalties were any business of mine. When I checked against copy, I realised that ‘600K’ is a computer mis-scan of the word ‘book’. Just as well I spotted that one.

Wales’s national academy of science and letters, the Learned Society of Wales, was established in 2010, and now has over 400 Fellows, who are based in Wales, the UK and beyond. I was delighted to be among the new batch of Fellows elected in April 2017.

As its website indicates, the Society ‘provides public benefit, including expert scholarly advice on a variety of public policy issues related to science, engineering, medicine, arts, humanities and social sciences. Fellows . . . are entitled to use the initials FLSW after their names.’

​The LSW is based at the University Registry on King Edward VII Avenue in Cardiff. The Society identifies and pursues a number of ‘Society Themes’, of which the first two are ‘Wales Studies’, which ‘provides opportunities to develop the knowledge and understanding of Wales, its people, language, society, culture, natural environment and heritage’, and ‘History of Science and Technology’, which provides ‘a programme of activities designed to stimulate and promote research and education on Wales’s scientific and technological history.’

(All images taken from the LSW website and used with LSW permission. Please follow image links to visit the relevant pages on the LSW website.)